Killing fields without the blood

Vietnam Behind The Lines: Images From The War, 1965-75. British Museum, until 1 December 2002

Nearly 60,000 people died during the Vietnam War and more than 135,000 were injured. Only one painting in this exhibition of North Vietnamese war artists reflects this staggering statistic, showing a soldier falling as his colleagues run forward towards an explosion.

Unlike American war artists of this time, who often depicted the casualties of battle, Vietnamese artists strove to create a quite different impression. Taking a quick glance at this show, you'd hardly know the country was at war.

Even the images of life at base camp reflect a certain domesticity: soldiers reading by lamplight, having their hair cut, being entertained by musicians. There are sketches of agricultural achievement: folks buckling down to work in the paddy fields, winnowing rice seeds and castrating a pig. It's all gung-ho solidarity, and there's little sense of emergency.

Of course, this has a lot to do with the fact that painting and drawing are necessarily "slower" arts than photography, the medium through which we now conventionally receive images of war. Having said that, the work of the 13 artists in this show is sketchy and unlaboured (in the best sense), and carries its own immediacy.

In the more finished paintings, especially those by Nguyen Thu, the influence of Chinese Socialist Realism is visible in the flat, bold, primary colours, and is a reminder that much of the work here is propaganda. The works that stay in the mind are those that let this official image slip, and reveal something of the psychological impact of the war.

One sketch by Nguyen Thu and Van Da shows two soldiers advancing through a jagged landscape of craggy trees: the figures are as desolate in mood as the Napalm-obliterated jungle.

Although these paintings lack the brutal poignancy of film and photography, they still offer much to consider: as a counterpoint to Hollywood's fetishisation of Vietnam, they are a quieter, perhaps more ethical reflection on what it means to document combat.